I love how i feel afterward ..I always feel soooo much better for days afterward...the warmth and artificial sun makes me feel soo much better...anyone have any idea why that is?

I also feel better when i go down to fla or here in ri in summmer too...winter in ri is awful for me...maybe i should move???

I just wrote a message but don't know what happened to it so I'll try again.

If you are like my daughter and I, the heat really helps our pain. It just plain makes us feel better. It doesn't last for days like you though.

We own a 32 bed tanning salon and we have alot of clients that come just for that reason. Then we have some that have SAD and that really helps that.

I know some are totally against tanning beds but the damage comes from burning. We are a certified salon so we don't allow anyone to stay long enough to get burned. The same with the sun. The damage to the skin comes from getting burned.

We have about 5 doctors that tan with us. They do it for the tan though. We also have several older ones that come for the way it makes them feel. One man is in his 80's. Believe me, I was shocked when he came in.

Sounds like you are tanning the smart way. Never allow yourself to get burned in the sun or out.

I'm glad you found something to make you feel a little better. We need all the help we can get. I can't tan right now because I am on Doxy. That's another thing we make sure of, is we check to see if they are on meds that would make them burn.

anyway, I feel really good when I am in the warmth...

thanks for responding to me..

I just thought of something. If it's really hot in the room and we get too hot then we both get really sick. As long as we don't get too hot it makes us feel better. Does it bother you if you get too hot?

I've wondered about this. Now that I know we both have lyme, I wonder if the heat is killing the keets and that's what makes us so sick.

Also, neither of us can stand to get in a hot tub. We both get very sick. If anyone knows the reason why, I would love to know.
Hubby was trying to be nice and wanted to buy me a hot tub but I had to tell him I couldn't use it.

Hope you have a good time in FL.

I know some dont agree, but the sun makes me feel better. I have been diagnosed with lyme for 2 1/2 years and feel much better when I tan either artificially or in the summer sun. I am always lowest and feel worst in the cold winter, but improve as soon as I start tanning and it starts to warm up!

BTW: I dont think it is just heat related as I use a Far infrared sauna almost daily and tho it feels good, it is not the same as the feeling from tanning.

We had lived in the NY suburbs, and I was shivering from October to May, was sleeping with layers of clothes and several blankets, wore layers during the day. During the weekend, I hibernated in the house.

If you constantly feel chilled as I did from the Lyme, the warmth here is great. I sunbathe almost daily, even though it takes me a long time to get to the pool when I am in pain. There have been days that I have been in bed crying, and even if I can't get myself out until 2pm, the sun really makes a difference.

To me, that means I am actually winning the war and full of DEAD keets that need detoxed ( and heat helps clear up) rather than still having a hefty dose of keet load and the heat makes me herx , instead.

I think that made sense.

Vandeb: it depends on what abx you are on. Doxy and Septra I believe and a few others, will give you really bad sunburn if you use them and go in the sun.

If I encounter heat ( sun, tanning, etc) and I feel like crap, I begin to worry that the keets are winning.

I do get some small detox reactions , but I feel NORMAL afterwards, as compared to just having one too many keets.

Yes...Florida is great! Never want to return to the Chicago area again. We had enough of winters there.

And...Florida encourages alternative treatments...

I believe he would say that when you are getting a lot of sun exposure, your 1,25-D levels increase, that 1,25-D at high levels is immunospuppressive and, as such, suppress your symptoms, making you feel better.

He believes that many people feel better in the summer due to this effect and then feel worse in the winter as the immunosuppressive effects of 1,25-D disappear as levels come down AND you feel the effect of the increased pathogen load due to suppression of the immune response to them during the summer.

I imagine that this explanation would also apply to the use of tanning beds.

The jury is still out on Dr. Marshall's work but the NIH and FDA will be attending his upcoming conference in March, which I hope will lead to increased scrutiny of his pathogenesis and protocol. It will probably be many years before there is any kind of consensus on its validity, so for the moment, each patient for himself, I guess.

Ticked

if what you say is true, then If i tan all year in warm weather my immune system will be able to keep me basically in remission...?

why wouldn't we all be doing this then ? I think I"ll plan on it now...sounds great to me...who cares if i have lyme left in me...if the heat makes my immune system keep it in check and no symptoms I"m the first in line!!

thanks for this info.....

In the tanning salon we do have a list of drugs that would make you sun sensitive but my advice would be to call your pharmacist just to be sure. We do that sometimes just to make sure we don't burn someone.

Let's not trade lyme disease for melanoma!

I don't buy the whole tanning bed story, i've read the data and they aren't any better than the sun in terms of causing skin cancer.

No, your immune system stops responding which means you FEEL better, but you are actually GETTING MUCH SICKER as your pathogen load increases because your immune system is not fighting it.

At some point, the effects of immunosuppression stop > you stop FEELING better > since you are now much sicker because your immune system was turned off/way down, you are in much more dire straights than when you started.

Ticked

I totally disagree with your theory..but that's ok...we all can agree to disagree here, that's the fun of it! We will never get rid of all the lyme in our body. our llmds try to strenthen our immune system and lower our load enough so that our ownimmune system will be able to keep that load low and keep so our symptoms will be able to be kept in check...

that's the best it will ever get...we will never elimnat lyme/etc totally from our bodies..that's why we can't ever give blood etc..strengthen the immune system..that's the key ..